


The City Speaks in Sirens

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: F/M, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-24 00:03:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They go to war together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The City Speaks in Sirens

**THE CITY SPEAKS IN SIRENS**  
GENERATION KILL  
Brad/Ray; Ray/FC  
 **WARNINGS** : Spoilers for the show, I guess. Nothing too spoilery, just a few generalizations here and there.  
 **NOTES** : So this is my first real GK fic, which is weird because I wrote [this Band of Brothers/The Pacific AU fic series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/11308) a million years ago. Prompted with a million good ideas by [colbertesque](http://colbertesque.tumblr.com/) over at Tumblr.

  
**1**.

They go to war together.

 

**2**.

Ray would call it a marriage if Brad didn’t hate that word.

Even the first three letters, when spilling out from Ray’s wide, chapped lips, set Brad off on a long-winded, Ray-esque tangent that would probably include bar graphs and pie charts if they got something even remotely close to PowerPoint out here in the desert.

Ray says it sometimes just to annoy him, tries to say it anyway, the slow curl of his mouth sloping around the m before Brad slaps his palm over Ray’s lips, dirty and dry. Ray will smile against Brad’s sandy palm, smile wide, before licking him for good measure, and Brad will mock-glare at him before Reporter says something stupid, before Trombley pipes in with his psychotic afterthoughts, before Walt kicks Ray’s back with his boot and calls out something undistinguishable from on top of the Humvee.

Ray would call it a marriage, but most of the time he doesn’t even have to.

 

**3**.

Ray runs out of Ripped Fuel and gets all existential, and Brad is there to help him climb back up by pushing him down into the pitch black of his Ranger Grave, where Ray sucks in a gulp of air and Brad hisses sharply against the knob of Ray’s spine, where Ray cries a little too loudly, where Brad touches and tastes and sucks all of the pigment from Ray’s skin. Ray bites his bottom lip all the way through and tastes blood in his mouth, and Brad is moving his tongue in ways that Ray never knew he could, and Ray hitches his breath once, twice, three times before Brad’s hands squeeze his hips hard enough to leave bruises.

Two days later, Ray will leave the shade of the Humvee to take a piss, the hot sand stinging the soft underside of his cock, and he’ll accidentally brush his fingers against the dark thumbprints there on his hips, on his thighs, and stop right in the middle of the chorus to “Sk8er Boi” and let out this little sound that’s embarrassingly close to a moan.

His hands go slack and he feels the piss coat his boots.

“Fuck,” he says.

 

**4**.

Ray complains about the desert sun on his fair skin.

Ray complains about the bruises that the butt of the forty mike mike makes when it presses against his heart, the slope of his shoulder there.

Ray complains about Reporter and the scratching of his pencil thick and loud on the white paper of his notebook, complains about the way Trombley looks at him sometimes, complains about Walt’s feet in his face, when Ray is hunched over and fiddling with the comms, his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, his forehead brushing against the crook of Brad’s arm.

Brad only tells him to shut up when he mentions his girlfriend back home, her name curling around the roof of his mouth, Brad’s tone sharp in the silence of the Humvee.

 

**5**.

Brad doesn’t talk about Ray’s girlfriend.

He swears it’s not a jealousy thing.

 

**6**.

They go home.

 

**7**.

One night, Brad slips into Ray’s house in California with the key that he keeps in the glove compartment of his truck, waking Ray up with soft, shallow kisses on the back of Ray’s neck, and Ray pulls him down into bed and they fuck and then sleep and then fuck once more.

When Ray wakes up at six, Brad’s side of the bed is cold and the sheets have been folded over, neatly, like no one had ever been there.

Ray calls Brad on his cell, but Brad never answers.

 

**8**.

Ray lives and breathes and sleeps with his girlfriend like a good little ex-Marine.

He starts up projects around the house that he never finishes, works with his hands more than anything else, because, even after the first tour, he never got used to not having something to do. He starts painting the living room some pale, watery color, starts tacking up new shingles on the roof, starts fixing the broken alarm clock that had collected dust on his bedside table for three months while he was in the desert.

He sends forty-two emails just to piss him off, but Brad never replies.

 

**9**.

Ray drinks.

That’s it, that’s the joke.

 

**10**.

He leaves six voicemails on Brad’s cell, and in most of them he says something close to, but not exactly, the words I’m sorry.

He says, “There’s this thing here,” this thing here that he can’t describe.

He says, “I’m not sure how to,” not sure how to tell you.

He says, “Please,” please come back.

He says, “Brad.”

 

**11**.

He meets Walt at the closest Starbucks to his house, and Ray almost but doesn’t quite touch him. He thinks that if he couldn’t still feel Brad’s fingers sharp on his skin, feel Brad’s mouth fitting over Ray’s mouth like a hungry puzzle piece, feel Brad lighting him up like mortar fire, than maybe he could have loved Walt instead.

Walt smiles and it’s all golden, and he asks how Ray is, and Ray lies with a straight face, and they order coffee and don’t talk about the desert.

Walt asks how Brad is and Ray shrugs and Walt frowns, but Ray is relieved when he doesn’t say anything else.

 

**12**.

Brad is out when Ray makes the long drive up to his place.

Ray slips inside and takes a beer from the fridge and sits on the back deck, watching the ocean crawl its way to the shore and then back out again. He puts his feet up on the table there, mostly because it always pisses Brad off, and waits.

It only takes an hour, maybe, for Brad to make his way back from the ocean, his wetsuit unzipped and hanging from his waist, a longboard balanced against his hip.

“Hi,” Ray smiles, callously, and Brad sighs, his jaw squared enough to hurt, and then places the board on the deck, pushing Ray’s feet off the table as he moves past him. “Did you have a nice swim?”

“Yeah,” Brad says, and his voice is rough. “What are you doing here?”

Ray licks his lips as Brad settles into the chair across from him, and he smiles so hard that his mouth starts to hurt. “Thought maybe you lost your phone,” Ray shrugs, and it’s dangerous. “And forgot your email password.”

Brad looks away. “Ray,” he says.

Ray laughs, and it’s not kind. “I didn’t realize that things changed just because we’re back home. I mean, you can talk to me, you can fuck me in the desert, but you can’t do it here?”

Brad turns back to him and his eyes flash. “I’m not the one with a girlfriend.”

Ray lifts his chin up, his eyes never leaving Brad’s. “Right,” he says, and his voice is rough and hollow.

He blinks and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, and maybe it’s because he can’t even begin to contemplate how embarrassing it would to start crying in front of Brad. “Right, Brad,” he says again and gets up to leave.

 

**13**.

Somewhere between an ambush in Afghanistan and orders to report back to Camp Pendleton, Ray had told Brad that he loved him. They had been alone then, pushed back against a stack of MRE boxes in one of the only empty tents in the desert, and Ray had breathed shallow against Brad’s collarbone, and Brad had had a hand on Ray’s waist, his fingers hungrily enveloping naked skin, and they had been half-undressed and pressed whisper close.

Brad had looked at Ray for a long moment, too long, before he had smiled, his mouth stretching wide. I love you too, he had said, his lips on Ray’s skin, and Ray had promised him whatever he wanted.

He would leave his girlfriend, he had said while Brad inched his tongue down Ray’s abdomen. He could sell the house, he had said, as Brad had gripped the back of his naked thigh, pressing him closer.

He would do anything, he had said, anything, as Brad had swallowed him whole.

 

**14**.

Brad doesn’t let him go.

They only make it to the kitchen, where Brad fucks Ray against the long counter, Ray’s fingers gripping whatever’s in reach, his cheek flush and pulsing against the granite.

 

**15**.

He breaks up with her because he should, not because Brad asks him to.

She doesn’t cry or yell or throw things, which only makes Ray feel worse, because her standing there with that knowing look on her face, that way she bites her lip, her crossed arms a shield between them, she knows that it’s something that Ray should have done a long time ago.

She doesn’t call him a coward, and he’s grateful for that at least.

 

**16**.

He goes out and gets drunk with Walt.

He smokes and drinks and spits and laughs and pretends that he’s someone else for a little while.

Walt pats his face, the bruise mark there from Brad’s kitchen counter, and tells him to go home and stop feeling sorry for himself. He smiles when he says it, though, so Ray’s not even mad.

 

**17**.

After Ray’s first tour, the government issued therapist at the VA hospital had diagnosed Ray with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the therapist’s curved, calloused hands folded neatly on top of his desk. The office had been clean and white, and had boasted him a Harvard graduate, the shiny frame that encased his diploma glinting under the phosphorescents.

He had smiled at Ray in this clinical, not unfriendly way, and Ray had stretched his palms out flat on his thighs because he could feel them curling into fists. He had wanted to say something stupid like “no shit,” but couldn’t bring himself to fuck up an evaluation that could have ended in an honorable discharge.

Brad had laughed at Ray’s slack mouth after he had told him later, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pulling him into a kiss, and Ray had stilled against him, Brad’s kitchen light blinking once, blinking twice.

Ray had said, “I’m going back, Brad,” and he wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t sad, and it was probably the most subdued he’s ever been in his entire life.

And Brad had shrugged and said, “Me too.”

 

**18**.

Brad comes to him.

They both use words that are close to, but not quite, I’m sorry.


End file.
